Plastic Rainbow Lemon Hill 2020
Photo credit Conrad Benner of Streets Dept photo blog
In April of 2020 as Covid-19 had us all in lock down, I activated an empty pedestal on Lemon Hill by installing Plastic Rainbow, as a tribute to our essential workers and a symbol of hope for my community. This piece has proven evolutionary as it grew and changed with the events that were in the forefront of our minds. What started as a way to show support for a community dealing with a global pandemic morphed into a symbol of mourning for the black lives killed by police brutality.
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In mourning and solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement this shroud covered the Plastic Rainbow for a symbolic 9 days.
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Plastic Rainbow, Incorporating Thomas Doughty, Morning among the Hills, 2013
I flatten, expand, over-simplify, compound and play with the boundaries of the American spirit. I was thinking a lot about the difference between signs and symbolic imagery and the implied meaning in those things within our single and collective interpretations. The Hudson River School paintings are intensely American in their approach and intent; It is well-known that artists of the Hudson River School captured the raw natural beauty of America in the mid-19th century, staking claim on it’s own unique visually lineage.
Nostalgia might be a contrived emotion, patriotism could be considered fiction and perhaps (romantic) nationalism can be manufactured. Yet, it is these very emotions that permeate these beloved American paintings and, in one-way or another these powers have shaped our contemporary American experience, for nothing is created in a vacuum.
I flatten, expand, over-simplify, compound and play with the boundaries of the American spirit. I was thinking a lot about the difference between signs and symbolic imagery and the implied meaning in those things within our single and collective interpretations. The Hudson River School paintings are intensely American in their approach and intent; It is well-known that artists of the Hudson River School captured the raw natural beauty of America in the mid-19th century, staking claim on it’s own unique visually lineage.
Nostalgia might be a contrived emotion, patriotism could be considered fiction and perhaps (romantic) nationalism can be manufactured. Yet, it is these very emotions that permeate these beloved American paintings and, in one-way or another these powers have shaped our contemporary American experience, for nothing is created in a vacuum.
Morning among the Hills, Thomas Doughty 1829-30, PAFA permanent collection Thomas Doughty, Morning among the Hills, 1929-30, PAFA, 1879.8.4
Plastic Rainbow, Incorporating Thomas Doughty, Morning among the Hills, 2013
Plastic buckets, Recycling buckets, various plastic containers, paint, enlarged vinyl printed reproduction of Morning among the Hills, Thomas Doughty 1829-30, PAFA permanent collection Thomas Doughty, Morning among the Hills, 1929-30, PAFA, 1879.8.4
Plastic buckets, Recycling buckets, various plastic containers, paint, enlarged vinyl printed reproduction of Morning among the Hills, Thomas Doughty 1829-30, PAFA permanent collection Thomas Doughty, Morning among the Hills, 1929-30, PAFA, 1879.8.4
